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The Power of Advertising

Does just seeing Ronald McDonald put you in the mood for a burger and fries?  Well, that effect is even stronger for children, who are bombarded with billions of dollars worth of food advertising brought to them by the media characters they love. 

It’s the low hanging fruit in the childhood obesity epidemic.  Redirect the power of advertising to promote foods to children that are lower in salt, sugar and fat.  And by promote, researchers mean, use the extraordinary power of media characters like Dora the Explorer and Tony the Tiger before her to deliver the message. 

“We know that when you don’t have a media character on a food, vs. when you do have one, kids are going to choose the food that has the media character,” says Vivika Kraak, Assistant Professor of Human Nutrition at Virginia Tech.

“But if you have a familiar media character, let’s say, promoting fruits or vegetables the child’s going to choose that fruit or vegetable.”

Really?  The power of a media character could get kids to eat broccoli?  Kraak says yes, that’s how powerful media images are.

“It’s very influential in terms of.. it inspires a lot of good memories often these characters are used with sounds and colors and animations to get these kids to pay attention to and remember this media character,” she says.

Kraak was part of a 17-member expert committee on Healthy Eating Research of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It’s calling on the food, beverage, and restaurant industry to close several loopholes in their voluntary commitments to market healthy food and beverage products to children.   It’s an effort that’s been going on for some time, but recently American cereal companies reduced the sugar content in their products after the federal food assistance program known as WIC, for women, infants and children, demanded it.

“Now if these companies can do that for WIC, so it’s 6 grams or less, why can’t they do it for children all over the country?”

Kraak’s paper on the influence of media characters on children’s diet and health is published in the Journal Obesity Review.

Robbie Harris is based in Blacksburg, covering the New River Valley and southwestern Virginia.